The Opelousas courier., 1887-01-15
A LUMBER CAMP.
Winter Work in Wisconsin's
Logging, Regions.
ALife of Severe Toll Attended by Hard
ships and Dangers

During the winter M. John Hancock,
Jr., devotes his time to lumber interests
in Wisconsin. He says that many OF the
lumber camps are composed of men who
work as cowboys on the plains in sum
mer and that among the luInbermen are
often found men of college breeding,
LAWYERS, doctors and others from all over
the country. He has often heard a lum-
herman, after the days work was don
and the camp assembled in their shanty,
quote Shakespeare with much dramatic
force and. correctness. The lunberman's
days work is from daylight until dark.
No matter how far his working ground
is from the camp he mustb be on the spot
by daylight and not leave it till ne can
see to work no longer, though he may be
ten or fifteen miles from the shanty. The
size of the camps varies from ten to sew
enty-fve and one hundred men, he says,
and as a rule they are all hard working.
sober men.
"They live in low, log shanties," he
added. "The first thing a camp does is
to construct their abiding place and then
cut a main road through the woods to
the river in which it is intended to
dump the logs. AS soon as the frost
m on and the ground is hard, the
chopping begins. There is one man
known as a chopper" who is followed
by two men who saw the tree into logs;
next come a ''swamper" and "chainer''
the "skidaway' men, witha yoke Of
oxen. The "swamper" strips the logs
and the |t'chainer" fastens a chain to
them so thatthey can be hauled to the
skidaway, which is two trees cut down
and placed four feet apart and laid at
right angles to the road on which the
logs are piled. From this they are taken
on broad sleds to the river and dumped
over the bank on to the ice. The logs
are cut from twelve to thirty feet long,
and where we are, are all white or Nor
way pine. Their thickness varies from
eight inches to five feet. The
river we use is the east fork OF the Black
river, which takes them to Lacrosse.
The pay of the lumberman is from SIG
to $40 a month aad board. They don't
draw their pay till the spring; and then
there are high times in the towns along
the river. Meny spend all their earnings
in drink, in a spree which lasts two or
three days. Accidents among the
lumbermen2 On, yes, lots of them.
Many are injured and killed by limbs of
trees falling on them, drowning or cutting
themselves with an axe. One of the most
remarkable exhibitions or nerve I ever
saw was op the part of a lumberman who
had cut his foot almost in two straight,
up to the instep. He managed to get
from his tree to tho shanty, and without
a word pulled off his stocking, and taking
a needle and thread deliberatel Y
sewed up the wound. He was as
white rs a sheet when he did it
and the beads of sweat stood out on his
forehead, though the shanty was cold,
yet he did it successfully, too. Very
cold sometimes2 Well, people here
would think SO, but we don't mind it
much, as a rule. Last winter the
weather for six weeks averaged 81 de-
grces below zero, and the men think
nothing of working in weather when the
record is 20 to 80 below zero. But I
have seen it so cold there that mems
ears, noses, hands and feet would freeze
and they couldn't work, 50 cold that
when a man would catch hold of an axe
he couldn't hold it. These times are
only rare, however, and the time l speak
of our thermometer. which concealed at
40 below, had ceased to do service and
the correct record was SO degrees below
zero. y New York MaU and Express.